Belushi: The Brilliance and Tragedy of a Comedy Genius

Saturday Night Live, The Blues Brothers, and the National Lampoon — John Belushi was an iconic figure of the 1970s comedy scene. But he was more than just a comic genius. 

At one moment, Belushi had the number one show on television, the number one film at the box office, and the number one record on the charts. Just three years later he died from a heroin overdose aged just 33. How did such a talented figure come to such a tragic end?

The award-winning director, producer, and writer, R.J. Cutler, helps us find out as we talk about his new film Belushi (2020). He uses previously-recorded phone interviews combined with archival footage to help us relive the extraordinary life of the beloved actor and comedian. 

R.J. explains how he obtained access to the interviews, love letters and home movies needed to make the film, and why it has been so hard to accurately depict Belushi’s life until now.

Belushi is available to watch now on Sky On Demand and NOW TV.

“We talk about the joy, and the brilliance, and the magic, but we also talk about darker things.” - R.J. Cutler

Time Stamps:

01:43 - Where you can watch Belushi.
02:22 - What the film is about and who John Belushi was.
06:25 - What made Belushi such an iconic character during the 70s and 80s.
11:52 - The anarchic nature of Saturday Night Live when it began.
13:50 - The complicated relationships people had with John McEnroe.
16:46 - The parallels with how Paul McCartney and John Lennon met.
18:43 - The love story of John Belushi's life and the tragedy that accompanied it.
20:40 - How John's relationship with his father contributed to his genius.
25:31 - The problem with achieving the American Dream.
29:01 - The melancholy aspects of John's life, and how his addiction got the best of him.
31:44 - How R.J. got involved with making the film.
35:55 - The responsibilities you have as a filmmaker when making a biopic of someone.
36:58 - What it was like working with John’s wife, Judy.
40:38 - Why R.J. used animation in the movie and how he found the right music to accompany it.
45:46 - How R.J. got access to the love letters that John had written before he died.
50:08 - The Billie Eilish film R.J. is releasing next. 

Resources:

Belushi (2020)
The Blues Brothers (1980)
Animal House (1978)
Saturday Night Live (1975-)
The National Lampoon
Wired: The Short Life & Fast Times of John Belushi by Bob Woodward 
Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry (2021)
Alamo Pictures
MLK/FBI: America on a Collision Course

Connect with R.J. Cutler:

Twitter

More from Factual America:

White Boy Rick: A Call for a Better American Justice System

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Transcript for Factual America Episode 44 - Belushi: The Brilliance and Tragedy of a Comedy Genius

R. J. Cutler 0:00
Hi, I'm R. J. Cutler. I'm the filmmaker, writer, director, producer of Belushi.

Speaker 1 0:51
-music-

Intro 0:51
That is the trailer for the documentary Belushi and this is Factual America. We're brought to you by Alamo pictures, a London based production company making documentaries about America for international audiences. Today we're talking about John Belushi, the groundbreaking comic of the 1970s and early 80s. And helping us to learn more about bringing this comic genius's life to the big screen is Emmy winning director R. J. Cutler. R. J. welcome to Factual America. How are you doing?

R.J. 1:21
I'm great. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Matthew 1:23
Thanks so much for coming on. You're here to talk, as listeners have already listened to the trailer, Belushi. Our UK listeners, it's available on Sky On Demand and Now TV. For those in the US or international audiences, where and how can they see this film?

R. J. Cutler 1:43
Well, if you have access to Showtime, which of course everybody in the US does, for sure, you can stream it on Showtime. You can watch it on Showtime. And then there are various distribution outlets throughout the world. We're kind of covering the Earth with Belushi.

Matthew 2:00
All right. Well, again, honored to have you on the podcast. And thanks so much for making this film. I've thoroughly enjoyed it. Maybe you could, for our listeners, I think many may not have seen the film yet. Maybe give us a little synopsis of what Belushi is all about?

R. J. Cutler 2:21
Well, Belushi tells the story of the life of the great John Belushi, who was a remarkable figure in American culture and society from the mid 70s to the early 1980s. He died, of course, tragically, at the age of 33 from a heroin and cocaine overdose. He was a drug addict who couldn't, though he tried very hard, couldn't escape the addiction at a time when there weren't really the kind of resources or awareness of the dangers of what recreational drug use could lead to. But at the time of his death, or really, at the time of his 30th birthday, John was the star of the number one television show on late night television in the United States, Saturday Night Live. He was the star of the most successful Hollywood comedy in history, which was Animal House. And he was the lead singer and performer and visionary behind the most successful band with the number one album in the world, which is the Blues Brothers. And I'm not saying that he had already achieved those things. I'm saying that at his 30th birthday, all three of those things were true at once. And he was a star of magnitude that we had kind of not seen before, rather remarkable. And yet a kind of every man figure who you would not have expected to have been so extraordinarily successful in so many different fields and a visionary really, who pushed his work in multiple directions. So most previous treatments of John's life had focused on his death. Very famously, Bob Woodward, one of the journalists behind the Watergate, who broke Watergate, turned his attention to John's death and wrote a book called Wired soon after John died. But that book was almost entirely focused on the circumstances surrounding John's death and it was rather sensational book. I wanted to focus on John's life and I wanted to focus on his work. And though we, you know, certainly our awards and all film that is as dark as telling of this story, I think could be, we really do focus a tremendous amount of time on what it was that made him special and made him who he was. And through it all there's this love story with his widow, well, first his high school girlfriend, then his fiance, then his wife and then his widow, Judy Belushi. So that's, you know, a long short summary.

Matthew 5:30
Just a little bit longer than a synopsis. But I think it's perfect. I think you raise a very good point about celebrating his life, sounds like we're at a funeral. But I think, you know, that, look, I make a practice of not watching any interviews that have been done previously, like with yourself, but I did happen to come across one with you. And what struck me, I only watched 10 seconds, the guy led in and introduced Belushi as the infamous John Belushi. Which I thought was quite, I was surprised. I was shocked by that. I mean, I'm of an age when, when Belushi first hit, I would have been first, second, third grade somewhere in there. And this guy was, he was iconic. I mean, and it was a world of catchphrases, which I don't think we really do much anymore. But you know, kids would go around school, just...

R. J. Cutler 6:22
Well, you know, it wasn't just that his performances were iconic or his characters, John Blutarsky or the Blues Brothers. You know, there is no Saturday Night Live without John Belushi. John Belushi, before Saturday Night Live, among the things that he did was write and direct the National Lampoon Radio Hour, which was an entirely underground bad boy kind of weekly radio show that was produced by John Belushi and directed by John Belushi. And written by John Belushi. And guess who had starred Gilda Radner and Bill Murray and Harold Ramis and Brian Doyle Murray and a number of other people. And at the same time, John was also starting to work with Dan Aykroyd and had already worked with Chevy Chase. And then when it came time for Lorne Michaels to assemble, the not ready for primetime players. Those were the people, among the people he gathered for his original cast. And the one person who he didn't at first gather, Lorne, was John Belushi, the guy who would put them all together in the first place. And they all said, my God, there's no point in us coming to you without John. And the film gets into the great stories behind how it happened. But, you know, he was much more than just even the iconic performer that he was. How do you say, the person described him infamous? I don't believe there was any infamy whatsoever associated with him in any way. But, you know, that's a moralistic judgment of the fact that he died from a drug overdose. And that was the problem, I think, with Bob Woodward's book, is that it was judgmental, it blamed John and it blamed American culture and society, And, you know, addictions are bad thing. But to blame the addict is to miss the point. And we know that now, we didn't really know it then. It's not that we don't pay attention to John's death. But people ask me why isn't there more details? And what about this? And what about this relationship? And I'm like, I just don't care. You know, we all die. We all die. It's like you really went on, you can make anybody's death infamous, I guess. Because it's, you know, not the awesomeness thing when people die. But the question is, how do we live? I mean, it's a fundamental existential kind of assertion. How do you live? And this guy lived, man, every second of his 33 years, and changed the world in a way that we continue to feel his impact to this day.

Matthew 9:21
I will have to say I was kind of keeping a mental note in my head when I was watching it, but then at the end, when it says died at age 33, I was like, he was only 33, I mean.

R. J. Cutler 9:33
In 2020 you got a lot of people, you know, just getting out of the house. Just getting out of their folks house. 33, oh, yeah, I should probably get Big Dig here.

Matthew 9:51
I mean, your film captures the Zeitgeist too, of the times. It was like, as you've already alluded, not just alluded to, mentioned all these amazing, these names. It was the perfect storm for comedy in the US, wasn't it? I mean, it was like, these are the pillars of that generation's comedy.

R. J. Cutler 10:11
Yes. And they changed what a comedy was. Because they brought the counterculture to television, they showed what television could be. They brought youth to television, they questioned the authority of the box, you know. And they questioned it at a critical moment, you know. Just think of, you know, there are these landmarks, when Nixon leaves The White House in '74. Saturday Night Live starts in 75. People Magazine doesn't exist until 1974. Saturday Night Live starts in 1975. So the emergence of a celebrity culture and its ties to the counterculture have a simultaneity with the emergence of this group of comedians who so perfectly capture the moment and respond to the moment in a way that, you know, there's a lot of broken glass, there are a lot of things that get cracked. And the whirling dervish at the center of all of it, breaking more things than anybody else, was John Belushi the anarchic performance artist. And it really was performance art, a full decade before anybody used that phrase.

Matthew 11:30
That's, that's very interesting. What I remember too, it was the, Saturday Live has now become so mainstream, but at the time, it was the show, you hopefully got to watch when your parents weren't noticing, you know, kind of thing. It was that kind of attitude towards it, it was very...

R. J. Cutler 11:51
It was bad, it was bad. But, you know, it was so good. And John, that's, there's a lot of talk in the movie and you see that we all connected to John. We of that generation connected to him. We felt he understood us, and we felt we understood him. He was part of the anarchy of the moment, but he would look at us with a raised eyebrow, and we knew he had us in mind. We knew, we could trust him to be, you know, questioning authority. We could trust him to break down a wall that would be holding us back and we could trust him to surprise us with his comedy and delight us. And he embodied that. His personal demons are another part of the story. The way in which he needed to stretch himself always as an artist was another part of the story. But as a personality, who was performing as a sketch artist, which was really the foundation of his work, emerging from Second city in Chicago to the National Lampoon Radio Hour into Saturday Night Live. He was, in a way, the every man who we understood. Even a 15 year old kid from outside of New York City, the suburbs of New York City, which is what I was, watching TV, I felt that guy knows who I am. And I know who he is. And I think people all over the world had that feeling.

Matthew 13:35
I would agree. As an aside, it just reminds me, in this country too, in that same timeframe. Person who had a similar impact, as they always mention here is John McEnroe.

R. J. Cutler 13:48
Oh, intersting. Sure. Very much of the time. And someone I know very well, because I grew up around the tennis world. And in those years, '74 to' 77 when John was coming up, I think is Wimbledon was maybe, was it 80? Or was it, no we've must have been in high school, right?

Matthew 14:14
I can't remember. It's just it just thought of him.

R. J. Cutler 14:17
I was following from teenage years. You know, when he was doing the, you know, kind of the USTA, you know, 1300, 1500, 1700. And of course, he never did 1700 because he was at Wimbledon when he was 1700. But he also captured that spirit and you connected to him. But you guys had a very complicated, or in the UK, they had a very complicated relationship.

Matthew 14:50
They did, but it was, and let's not, I don't want to derail the conversation again. I'm the one who brought it up.

R. J. Cutler 14:55
The movie is about him.

Matthew 14:56
Yes, exactly. Yeah, it is complicated because you've got this complication of class that you get here in the UK. And while he was, it was a complicated relationship with the British establishment, there is a generation, your and mine generation who would have said, they actually appreciated that. They liked that he was shouting out at the empires and the rest.

R. J. Cutler 15:22
You have the additional complexity of the structure of success in his chosen field. So, McEnroe has to win, he emerges on the, you know, at Wimbledon, so that becomes a fundamental thing. John Belushi didn't have to get the approbation of the British culture and society. He didn't have to be invited into the tennis club, you know, or bow to the queen or whatever, you know, the royal bow. That's what the Python folks had to deal with, and the Beatles had to deal with. The Saturday Night Live gang, they were American to the core. And, you know, if you asked, they would have said who gives a shit about over the pond.

Matthew 16:05
But you mentioned the Python people. In this whole thing, I mean, we talked about all this talent that he brought together. It does remind me of Python. And what is, when these things happen, where all these people, in that case, they all happened to go to Cambridge, I think it was. But he, you know, he's at Second City and goes to Chicago, brings all these amazing people together, like you said, the National Lampoon. And then Lorne Michaels bringing them all together then for the not ready for primetime players. It's just, you know, all these people in the same room is just absolutely amazing.

R. J. Cutler 16:42
It is amazing. It's an amazing convergence. And it's not unrelated to the question how the hell did Paul McCartney and John Lennon meey? You know, of all the Earthlings, how did those two Earthlings bump into each other? And The Lampoon guys, and the Python guys did, and the the Saturday Night Live guys did. One of the things this film tells you is how they bumped into each other. And it's because they all wanted to work with John Belushi. And that's an amazing thing. Another fascinating part of this story, we don't really get into this in the film, because we don't compare them to the Beatles, The Not Ready For Prime Time Players, we don't compare them to the Beatles, and the Python guys. But there was a time when you didn't know if this group was going to stay together, like the Python gang. Or if they were going to break up like the Beatles. And they broke up. You know, they only lasted at their peak, which is after Chevy left and once John emerges and season two, they were really only together for two and a half years. What if they had stayed together for, you know, which is of course, we do get into this Lorne speaks to it in the film. And you can tell Lorne, Lorne has a certain sadness that they didn't choose that path, but they didn't. And they chose other paths. And that's part of what the film is about as well.

Matthew 18:12
But he sticks, elements stick together in a way. Yes, he goes on to make Animal House, he and Aykroyd. I hadn't realized, there's a lot of things I hadn't realized before watching this film. One being his many talents, that he wasn't just some comic, he was all these other things that you've already mentioned. But then this friendship with Aykroyd which...

R. J. Cutler 18:39
Yeah, the film is really two great love stories, isn't it? Great love story that John and Judy have. But it's the great love story, I mean, Dan describes meeting John as love at first sight, around John. And they met at a bar and they stayed up all night. And apparently that very first night, they were up all night, John said something to Dan about wanting to create these two characters who would be, you know, Jake and Elwood Blues, brothers who had just gotten out of prison. And they didn't pursue that for many years, but they were connected. They had a mind meld from moment one. And they loved each other. And the other thing Dan says is that I instantly recognized the value of being friends with this man. And I think he felt the same. And they just, you know, that's a certain kind of falling in love. And it's beautiful. And you see it. And they were together their whole lives. And part of the tragedy of the story is, as you experienced in the film, is that Dan will forever regret that in the moment he had the opportunity to go out to LA and rescue John. He stayed in New York and wrote Ghostbusters, which he was writing for John, which he felt would help rescue John. And, of course, John never got to be in Ghostbusters. Bill Muuray played that role. And, as Dan says, that's the thing I have to live with.

Matthew 20:19
I think it's a very good point. I am gonna ask you a question about again, this sort of the darker side of Belushi. But before we go there, I think you've touched on it, but what do you think is, what was his genius, his comic genius? And not just limited to comedy, but what was his genius, you think?

R. J. Cutler 20:42
I think it ties, you know, I once sat on a panel with the great writer, Southern biographer, Walter Isaacson. He wrote the Steve Jobs biography. He wrote a biography of Benjamin Franklin. He's written many kind of very, very prominent, lauded biographies. And I said to him, what's the, what ties all of these people together, in your experience? And he said, it's all about daddy. And I think that when you ask the question, and I've, of course, kept that in mind in all of my work because he's right. And which is not to say there aren't a lot of other influences and other impacts. But you get a lot out of what that relationship is, when you're asking yourself, what's the secret or what's the genius about. And John had this very complicated relationship with his father, but John was also like his father, the outsider, immigrant. And, you know, his father was an Albanian who grew up aware that the American dream was something he wanted to pursue. His dad grew up an Albanian, wanted to be like John Wayne, wanted to be an American riding horses and pursuing freedom and successors family, brought his family over. Came over here with his wife, had his kids in America, opened up a restaurant, pursued the American Dream, never really spoke English well, was always a bit ashamed of it. Albanian was spoken as the first language in his household. And they all felt a little outside the waspy, blond haired, blue eyed, you know, suburban Chicago community that they were a part of. And that outsider status, made John who he was and gave him a unique perspective. And then there was his nature which was fearless and unwilling to stand up to bullshit, unwilling to be, you know, to be overcome by bullshit, unwilling not to stand up to it, unwilling not to call it for what it is. And I think that combination goes to the core of who he was. Also, he had great taste. He admired Jonathan Winters and Bob Newhart, from a young age. He loved music. He just, you know, he had an artistic soul, but he wasn't every man. I mean, if he hadn't become John Belushi, and you ask people who grew up with him to tell you about John Belushi, they'd say, yeah, I saw him in a play. And yeah, I liked his band. But man, was he a great football player? What? He was a great football player. I didn't know that. But that's who he was. He was, you know, he was a bit of an all American kid. But he was the Albanian immigrant. And you smush those two things together, along with the hard work he did. And the inspiration he received from Second City and his God given talent and you get John Belushi's genius.

Matthew 24:13
He was even homecoming king, wasn't he? I mean, that's absolutely amazing. We're gonna take a quick break for our listeners, but then we'll be right back with RJ Cutler.

Factual America midroll 24:25
You're listening to Factual America. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter at Alamo pictures to keep up to date with new releases or upcoming shows. Check out the show notes to learn more about the program, our guests and the team behind the production. Now back to Factual America.

Matthew 24:44
Welcome back to Factual America. I'm here with R.J. Cutler, award winning director, producer and writer of Belushi. UK listeners, it's available on Sky On Demand and Now TV. In the US, it's Showtime. And for the rest of the world, just google it, I'm sure you'll find a place that's streaming it. We were talking about this genius of Belushi, what drove him, the all American kid who's also the outsider, an immigrant. And you have this interesting quote, a very poignant quote from Tony Hendra, don't you, in there, that I thought was, I don't know it by heart. But it kind of talks to this idea of the American dream.

R. J. Cutler 25:31
Tony speaks to the American dream in a kind of more complex way. There is this American dream of success and fame and fortune. But Tony says, then what? Once you get that, then what? And that was a question that John had to face. Once you get, once the outsider becomes the insider, then what? And once the outsider becomes the insider, who's there to gauge at what price that success was achieved? And it's not a thing that we spend a lot of time reflecting on in American culture and society, we just want the success. And you know, we're living through that right now. This is the nature of capitalism. And it eats everything in its way. It eats culture, it eats, it eats values, it eats faith, eats community. It doesn't give a shit, capitalism does not give a shit about your community. And that's what, you know, now capitalism is Donald Trump, disgusting, classless, you know, phony, loathsome, there's nothing good about it at the end of the day. But on the way, there's some good things. And it looks good, and it seems very attractive. And then you end up with the streets of fire. What's going on in America now, there's so many of us have been like, we've been saying this for years, this is where we're going. You left that guy you end up with this. Well, you could also say, and I think Tony is alluding to it to a large degree, you pursue this American dream, without necessarily a culture that is then going to question at what price and it can leave you feeling pretty lonely. And wondering what's it all about Alfie, and was it worth it. And John, of course, was a very private man, who loved his work and loved doing the work. But as I pointed out before, he was doing so at a time where celebrity culture was just emerging in this country, and the press felt entitled to your privacy. But you didn't have the tools, you didn't have the mechanism. John didn't have publicists who could support him and work with him and make sure that his intros were properly written. You know, so he'd get into an interview and an interviewer would say, the thing that would piss him off right away. And then, you know, you see it in the film. He had this ridiculous notion that his private life was his own. And, anyway, there you go.

Matthew 28:30
Just for listeners, Tony Hendra is, well known for a lot of things, but you might know him as the cricket bat wielding manager from This Is Spinal Tap. So this thing, to carry on with that, do you think this is what's behind the melancholy? You describe, I think the whole film starts with this Harold Remis talking about this voracious appetite for life that Belushi had, but also wondering at the same time, whether he's going to be able to survive.

R. J. Cutler 29:03
Yeah, sure. I mean, there's a friction between John's enormous appetite for life. And a question is to where that appetite goes from being the thing that's driving him to his success, to the thing that's going to devour him. If you don't know where to stop, where do you end up? Or if you don't know how to stop, or if you're an addict, as Carrie Fisher tells us, and stopping only forces you into a worse position, because you don't have the tools. John comes of age, his fame comes of age at a time when they don't have the tools to deal with fame, and they don't have the tools to deal with addiction. As I said, the Betty Ford clinic, Oh, I haven't said this. The Betty Ford clinic opens the year John dies. In America, the Betty Ford clinic is the foundational symbol of recognizing addiction as an illness, and saying you can be helped. You've got the mumps, you can be helped. We're gonna get a vaccine for COVID. If you got addiction, you can be helped. Well, there was a time before that, before the Betty Ford clinic opened, where that wasn't part of our culture. You were shamed if you were an addict. And you know, John's also a kid, he personally comes of age in the 1960s, drug use is recreational. And again, cocaine is everywhere in the 70s. We can judge him, we can blame him for it. But the man was an addict, and he didn't have, nobody in his life had the tools to recognize the danger of that or to help him fix it. So that's tough. That's tough. If you, in a way he was the first, among the first, who had to deal with all of those things with that enormous success. So that's what Tony's talking about, as well. There's just this kind of complicated nexus of things that ultimately get him in.

Matthew 31:23
I wanted to talk now a bit about, if it's okay, about sort of this story behind the story, because I think that's a interesting one as well. I mean, how did this film get made? I mean, it all starts with the biography not named Wired. Right. We have this Belushi biography that Judy...

R. J. Cutler 31:43
Well, it really does all start with Wired. It starts with Wired because in the wake of John's death, the family, really Judy, and other family members agreed to let Bob Woodward have access to John's life and to write a book about him. And then the book comes out and they're sorely disappointed for reasons you and I have discussed. This book focuses on his death and focuses on the most salacious things, it doesn't focus on his artistry, it doesn't really tell the story of that. It's just obsessed with details, you know, sensational details around his death. And they're very disappointed. And they become very frustrated, and they say no to anybody who asks for access to tell the story. And Judy endeavours to put together an oral history about John, she doesn't know what she's gonna do with it. But she and a couple of other friends, one of whom is a man named Tanner Colby, he is a journalist, start interviewing John's friends. And it's within months and years of his death. So the interviews, though they're not necessarily well produced. You know, they're just running gut. Some of them are on a telephone. Some of them are in the House of Blues. So you hear music in the background. Some of them are just, you know, some of them are filmed, some of them aren't. But they're thinking one day, they'll put together an oral history book, maybe. And they interviewed everybody. I mean, they interview everyone, everyone who was in John's life from childhood to death. Family members as well, snd Lorne and Chevy and everybody. And they publish a book, some years later called Belushi, which is a tip of the iceberg of this oral history. And it doesn't necessarily, it comes and goes really. And then those audio and video tape recordings sat in a box in Judy's basement, Martha's Vineyard for years, decades. And about 10 years before we start making our film, John Battsek, documentary producer of great renown, and a dear friend of mine, and a man with whom I produced a film called Listen to me Marlon, which is about Marlon Brando. John starts approaching Judy, and asks her for access to make a movie about John. And she says no, because they say no to everybody. And John, who's, you know, knows better than to take no for an answer. And is a man who doesn't mind, you know, hearing no more than once. He comes back six months later, he says have you changed your mind. Have you changed your mind? And Judy says no, but lovely to hear from you. And they start to develop a friendship. And every six months for seven or eight years John Battsek approaches Judy Belushi and Judy says no, but thanks for asking and it's good to hear from you. And then we do Listen to me Marlon and John Battsek says to me - I'm gonna ask her one more time, would you direct it? Maybe if we show her Listen to me Marlon, and you direct this movie, she'll be inclined, who knows. And sure enough, she watches the Brando film. And her life has shifted in a way, where she thinks maybe it's time to do this. And she says yes to us. And that's how the film gets made.

Matthew 35:15
Interesting. So that's how you get involved. And actually, I'm gonna ask you a question. We had Sam Pollard on, just actually a few days ago, he says hello, by the way. About MLK/FBI, which is out now.

R. J. Cutler 35:36
Terrific film.

Matthew 35:37
Yeah, it is a terrific film. He posed a question to one of his, well, he doesn't have talking heads either in there, except at the very end. One of the historians is like, so I'm going to pose it to you, as well. What is your responsibility as a filmmaker when making a film about someone like Belushi?

R. J. Cutler 35:57
It's the same responsibility, I think one always has, which is to, this is specific to the answer what is your responsibility as to the question what is your goal? What are your objectives? What are your values? My responsibility is to tell the truth. That's my only responsibility, I think. I also want to be engaging and entertaining, and make a great movie and be cinematic and spin a good yarn. And delight and move and all of those things. But my responsibility is to tell the truth.

Matthew 36:37
And so when working with the family members, I mean, does that, I guess, in this case, how was it working with Judy on this? That is, by starting off with the way it did, which is she saw your previous film, she pretty much gave you basically carte blanche, I would...

R. J. Cutler 36:54
She did, she did. Well, one of the things we always talk about with the subject of the beginning is that we have to have final cut. And, you know, fortunately, I've had the kind of career that puts me in the position to say, I need to have it. And the subject, they're not the first to have granted it to me. So, you know, that's part of the agreement that we make. But that doesn't mean that, you know, in this case, by the way, the only interview I did on this movie was with Judy, everything else was from the archives, was from that oral history. And I interviewed Judy three times over a two year period at great length, you know, multiple days. And she was, she was great. And it wasn't easy for her because, you know, we're dredging up painful memories, and they're painful memories from long ago. And in some cases, they're painful memories of things she'd rather not remember. And you hear it in the film, you know, we discuss the question of responsibility. And we discuss whether or not she considered an intervention. And we discussed the difficult times in their marriage. And we talked about all the joy. And we talked about the brilliance and we talked about the magic, for sure. But we get into the darker things. So, but in terms of, Judy didn't see the film until the film was completed. And, you know, then she gave us feedback. And, you know, I don't think, if you watched the cut before she gave me feedback and the cut after she gave me feedback, I don't think you'd recognize any changes, although I'm sure there were some nips and tucks here and there.

R. J. Cutler 37:24
But there probably would have been changes anyway. I mean, there's always a few little changes.

R. J. Cutler 38:46
There would have been changes anyway, we go through this all the time. There's nothing, the likelihood that her feedback is not dissimilar from feedback we would get, you know, you're always getting feedback. You always have early audiences while you're making your film. But the thing that matters, really on this subject in my mind is that she and other family members, Jim, were very moved, they found the film truthful, and they're grateful for it. And that, you know, they have wonderful warm loving things to say about the film. Would they have made, would Judy had made a different movie than R.J. Cutler made? Sure. Sure she would have. And I would say that about every subject of every film. Would Anna Wintour have made a different movie than I made of the September Issue? Of course, of course she would have. And that's awesome. That's an awesome thing. But, you know, the films I'm making are, they're, on some important level, they're a collaboration between my filmmaking and the subject's life. And so any film I make is going to be different than any film another filmmaker would make on the same subject.

Matthew 40:15
And so how do you go about telling this story? Because it's very interesting, cause as you said, it's pretty much everything's from the recordings. And so one thing, a little spoiler alert to people, but a good amount of it's animated. I wasn't expecting. So in a word, how did that idea come come about?

R. J. Cutler 40:38
Well, you asked, before you asked how animation came about, you asked how do you go about making the movie? So I'm going to answer both questions. But start with the first one. The first thing we did was ask Judy for a list of songs that John loved when he was growing up. So she met him when he was at senior in high school, and she was a sophomore. What were the songs that they listened to? And we knew music that he loved later on, and we kind of built a playlist. And we put all the songs together. We didn't, because we knew we didn't have, I didn't want to do interviews on camera. We knew we only have these audio interviews. We didn't have a lot of footage of them as young people. But we did have still photos and graphics. We didn't have private life footage later on. We had interviews and performances and things. So we knew we had some things but we knew we didn't have a lot of things. Well, what can we build as a foundation? What can be a bet? So we started with music in this film. And there was a point at which was, song after song after song after song, which is its own problem. Now when you listen to it, it's portions of song after song after song, right. It is a lot of music. And it is the music that John listened to, loved and made. From beginning to end. So that was the first thing. At that point, I recognized that there were important holes in the movie. There were things you wanted. There were emotional moments that you wanted to see, that you couldn't see because we didn't have footage. So what are you going to do? And I thought, well, maybe animation. And then I saw the work of the brilliant Oscar nominated animator Robert Valley. And Robert and I connected immediately on vision. And then Robert sent me some animation cells of young John Belushi three, four years old, knocking on his neighbor's door, and the neighbor opens the door and John goes in and does a little performance in his neighbor's living room, which is the kind of thing that young John Belushi would do. And I thought that kid, that young John Belushi, I was thinking again, about my conversation with Walter Isaacson. Because let's face it, we are all the kid we were once. And if you want to understand who a person is, look at that childhood. And there was, I thought that young John that Robert Valley animated is going to appear at different critical moments throughout the film. Now we have a structure to the animation, we have a driving idea behind it, we have a great artist who's doing it. And there you go.

Matthew 43:31
And our listeners here in the UK will recognize Robert Valley, because he's famous here specifically for the the Gorillaz videos that he's made. So instantly recognizable style, but still very unique to your film.

R. J. Cutler 43:47
And also very John. Very anarchic. You know, we couldn't get, we made this film in the days before COVID. So it would have been lovely for me to go up to Canada and visit. I mean, I'm sorry for Robert to come down from Canada to visit us in LA. But he wasn't allowed for reasons I'm not, I'm not privy to. If you're going to have an animator doing your John Belushi animation, you want him to be an outlaw, too.

Matthew 44:20
And I think that's a very good point that you've already made about how this didn't just plug a hole, you know, for stuff that you were lacking in terms of footage or whatever. But it carries on and very well. And you've answered the question I had in my head because you do have these little, again, a bit of a spoiler alert, but you have these older versions of John that morph back into the kid and then back into the older version, you know, in some of these scenes, which is, it was quite, I thought was quite poignant.

R. J. Cutler 44:52
Well, thank you for saying so. That was the intention. And I mean, the kid, the little boy is the last person you see at the Chateau Marmont, sitting on the edge of his bed, in the flickering light of the hotel sign, wondering what happened. And you feel it. You feel that little boy and you come to know that little boy because that little boy was on set for the Blues Brothers. That little boy was, you know he's been everywhere with you through that movie.

Matthew 45:23
And I don't necessarily would say separate it, but you've got, so we got archival, we've got the animation, but you've got these letters. Because it is, as you say, it's a love story, almost two love stories, but it's certainly this love story between John Belushi and Judy. Are those, those are actual letters?

R. J. Cutler 45:43
Yeah, letters are another thing, there's so many things. The day that we discovered in the archive the audio tapes that comprise the oral history was also the day that Judy showed us the letters that she had kept from John. He was a very private man. And he wasn't very emotionally revealing in public, but he was very emotionally revealing in his correspondence to Judy. And he kept that correspondence up from, you know, from when they met as teenagers, until his death. And he was open and confessional and a lot of the drama of the narrative is conveyed through the letters that he wrote. And then there's the question how do you bring those to life, them to life. And fortunately, another wonderful collaboration on this film was the work of Stefan Nadelman, who is a graphic artist who is responsible for having brought the letters to life graphically. And he did such beautiful work with that. But we also had the great good fortune of working with Bill Hader to provide the performance of those letters. And, you know, I'll tell you, the performance had very little to do with the director. I mean, Bill said to me, do I do my voice or John's voice? I was like, no, no, you be you, but to the degree possible, capture the spirit. And man he does. He captures John's heart and soul. He's not doing an imitation of him. But he brings those letters to life in a really profound way.

Matthew 47:23
Well, I completely agree. I mean, it's hard to believe, I think we're starting, we're coming to the end of our time together, R.J.

R. J. Cutler 47:34
What should we do? We'll have to meet again.

Matthew 47:36
Well, I would love to have you on again. And speaking of which, so well, I'll ask you that question shortly. But while we got you here, I mean, you got your start with D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus. What's, I mean, that's amazing.

R. J. Cutler 47:52
It's amazing for my life. It's a great good fortune. Yeah, yeah. Wonderful artists, wonderful people, wonderful teachers. And together we made a wonderful film. The story of how I met Penny and Chris is that my dear friend and producing partner on that film, Wendy Ettinger and I knew we wanted to make a film about the Clinton presidential campaign. We didn't know much more. But we didn't know how to make movies. And we figured if we could get, maybe if we could get D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus to make it, we'd be on to something. And I asked a friend of mine who was kind of in that line of work, how we would get to D.A. Pennebaker. And he said, why don't you look up his number in the phonebook? Good idea. I'll look his number up in the phonebook. And guess what, his number was listed. And guess what? When I dialed it, he picked it up. He picked up the damn phone and then when I said that I want to make a movie about the Clinton campaign. I want you to direct it. He said, well, why don't you come by and we'll chat. So it's really, it was really a charmed experience and a great blessing in my life. And Penny and Chris, man, they taught me, they love to teach. I think I would say almost as much as they love to make films. Penny, of course passed away this summer, is no longer with us. But I am among the many filmmakers who had the enormous benefit of their generosity and brilliance and desire to teach others and to aspire to make documentaries that would, you know, hold a candle up to the work that the two of them did and have done throughout their careers.

Matthew 49:50
Well, I'm sure they would be very proud of their pupil or probably have already told you that. But what's next for you? I mean, you're doing all this promo stuff for Belushi, but I'm sure you're not sitting still. I'm sure there's other projects, rods in the fire.

R. J. Cutler 50:08
Well, quite literally as we speak, we're finishing up a feature documentary that I'm making about Billie Eilish, the young pop star. We spent a year filming with her and her family and folks can see a trailer for that film online. Google it. It's Billie Eilish: The World's a Little Blurry, is the name of the film. It's going to be premiering on Apple TV+ all over the world on February 26. It's also going to be in theaters all over the world on February 26. Very, very proud of it. Very, very excited to share it. It's the story of her 17th year, which is the year that she released her album and right after she turned 18, won a whole bucket full of Grammy Awards and emerged as a global phenomenon. But the story begins long before that. And it's also a family story about her relationship with her brother, her relationship with her folks. It's, as I say, I'm really really excited about it and about sharing it with the world.

Matthew 51:26
Well you're following D.A. Pennebaker's footsteps. You know, he did primary Don't look Back. You've got, you know, War Room. You've got Perferct Candidate, you've gotten now this. So we look forward to seeing that. And if we haven't scared you off, we'd love to have you on to discuss that film when it comes out.

R. J. Cutler 51:44
Can't wait.

Matthew 51:46
Well, sounds great to me. And can I just say thank you so much for your time today. We really enjoyed it. And just to remind our listeners that the film we've been talking about, if you haven't figured it out already, is Belushi, available on Sky On Demand. And Now TV here in the UK, Showtime in the US. And as I said before, just Google it, you'll find it. And want to give a thanks here to to This Is Distorted studios here in Leeds, England for keeping us open and safe during our yet another national lockdown. And please remember to like us and share us with your friends and family wherever you happen to listen or watch podcast. This is Factual America signing off.

Intro 52:29
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